USB & Firewire

I had an interesting conversation with an engineer over the phone
today concerning the differences between USB and Firewire. It started
with a discussion on transfer speed. Some of the stats I’ve seen put
Firewire 400 at 400 Mbps, and USB 2.0 around 480 Mbps, but this
engineer informed me that even though USB 2.0’s top speed is higher,
the transfer speed tends to fluctuate. Firewire, on the other hand, is
a steady transfer. The way I understood it, when the speeds are taken
on average, Firewire actually comes out on top. In addition to a higher
overall speed, Firewire’s steady transfer rate is particularly useful
for hard drive applications. Perhaps it’s time we looked into some
Firewire enclosures.

The conversation also ranged over new revisions for USB and
Firewire, and apparently USB revisions 3.0 and 4.0 are ready and
awaiting implementation. USB 3.0 is supposed to run at around 1 gig
speeds and 4.0 has been clocked at a mind-boggling 2-plus gig transfer
rate. I think we are about to see a revolution in computer hardware
design in order to keep up with these rapid changes in data transfer
abilities. There should be some new terabit hard drives releasing in
about a year, and hardware manufacturers are headed towards solid-state
disks, which are, by some estimates, 150% faster than current drives.
If my info’s off, put it in the comments, but in any case we have some
revolutionary changes in computing to look forward to (what else is
new?).